I finished the task I needed to finish yesterday while it was still yesterday, and I've finished the task I wanted to finish today long before midnight (still 2 hours away!). At this rate, I might actually finish this thing.

So, what do you do when you're assigned to a group and one member just doesn't give a fork? I've had this happen in undergrad, but never grad school. I used to just suck it up and do it, but there is a shit-ton more work now than there was back then, and honestly, I have no desire to pull someone else's weight anymore. I have enough weight to pull on my own, thank you very much.

WWPPKD??? Please answer, I fear I may lose my shiitake by the end of the week.

I just sucked it up with the other group members who wanted to work and did the work without confronting Slacker. Usually grad projects let you give feedback on the other members, so me (and other hard working members) always gave them awful comments that were then passed along to the professor. I know for a fact people have gotten their grades bumped down for slacking in projects with me.

Teaching tomorrow! Huzzah. Next up, impossible ms. revisions and plotting an abstract for a major conference next year. Also, talking Journal #2 into accepting a special issue from me and co-editor. (I feel like I haven't really worked because I've been busy with so much university-related travel, so it's kind of a relief to get back to things.)

I didn't take any science is undergrad because I had tested out through Advanced Placement testing. Anyway, I have to make up undergrad level anatomy course in order to get my current degree. I'm taking an online version from the local community college. The discussion board questions are so basic, and my classmates can barely seem to handle them. The responses, aren't well thought out, have mediocre grammar, and are barely on topic half the time.This is one of the message board posts:

Quote:

for the negative and positive feedback i get confused only because i am always referring to the negative feedback i automatically think is going to be something bad but that is not always the case or even if it ever is ? but i should get that out of my head the the relation of negative is bad and positive is good when it comes to this study am i correct in doing so ? because i tried to not think that way with the graded discussion on more on the facts and readings in the book and video

Okay so basically I am boned. I don't know how I'm going to finish this on time. Absolutely nothing in this mini-project has worked out. It lacked direction from the start, the new directions after the first things didn't work out sucked, and then my supervisor went on a leave of absence and is barely responsive to e-mails, so... now I've got pretty much nothing.

I mean, I have a plan for my thesis project, with a different supervisor I've worked with before and work very well with, know how I'll tackle that, and am crazy excited to get going, but I need to finish this first to a passable degree in order to even stay in the program and, by extension, really get that opportunity and I just don't think that's going to happen with what I have right now. It's all terrible.

I've been assured by upper years that even if I completely blow this, I'll still be okay, but it's kind of hard to believe that.

You know that feeling you get half way through a term when you realize how much work you have to finish. Yeah, that feeling just hit me. Why am I doing this to myself?

Hey, that is where I am at too. Over the course of the next three weeks, I have two midterms, two lengthy written individual assignments, one large lab report and a paper to write. Then the week after that I have another 15 page paper due. Ha ha ha ha ha what. I haven't been procrastinating either, most of this just got dumped on my plate within the past week.

I organize a lot of activities here. Normally I announce them to Groups 1 and 2, who ask for plain text only so that they can fit the announcements to their preferred format. Today, I decided Group 3 might also want to know about an event, so I sent the same (exactly the same; it was forwarded) message to Group 3'd organizer who emailed, and then called, to say how unprofessional I was for not including other information she wanted, plus a logo, plus something else. I was like, excuse me? I've never written to you before. I don't know what you want. If you wanted that, please tell me and I can send it. The other groups I write want exactly what I sent. She didn't really seem to appreciate that, and had already sent the message anyway as is (well, with bonus terrible formatting of her own).

....Really? Really? How hard would it have been to send an email requesting additional info? Totally perplexed. Come on people, let's just communicate and get along.

Leaving for a conference in my hometown, although I'm not really over my stupid head cold. My talk is scheduled for Saturday morning. I will be super busy until then, meeting up with friends (and their new baby!) and hopefully doing some networking, but I hope that I can squeeze in some time to re-edit my paper. It still feels semi-coherent to me, maybe because I wrote it in such a dazed state. But my dad is coming in to listen to my talk, and I want him to be proud of me.